At last the price of shares fell to ten cents. Hitherto, from one cause and another, Mr. Townsend had put off selling his stock at the ruinous rates at which it was quoted in the market, under the fallacious hope that an advance would take place. When it was eighty cents on the dollar, notwithstanding his first wise determination, to sell at any price that it would bring, the resolution to diminish his fortune, already reduced nearly one half, by a positive sacrifice of over forty thousand dollars—the difference between what he had paid for his stock and the selling price—he could not bring himself to take. He looked at this large sum, and at what would be left, and was unable to exercise the firmness required to cut it off. The whole amount of his investment in United States Bank stock, had been one hundred and forty thousand dollars, at an average of ten per cent. above par. Since the failure of the Bank, nearly every thing beyond this had been lost by the failure of individuals; and what was still worse, notes of hand amounting to nearly ten thousand dollars, which had been turned into cash, came back unpaid, and in default of his immediately honoring them, had been sued out against him as the endorser. Thus did his affairs become more and more a tangled web, and his mind fell more and more into irresolution and confusion.
When the stock fell to seventy, in a moment of desperation, he determined to sell every share, and thus save a certain remnant. He called upon a broker, and ordered him to effect a sale for him without delay.
“At what rate?” asked the broker.
“At the last quotation—seventy cents.”
“That was but nominal,” replied the broker. “No sales, to my knowledge, were made at that price.”
“In the name of heaven, then, what will it bring?” said Townsend, much disturbed.
“That is hard to say. But, I should suppose, sixty-five might be obtained.”
“Sixty-five?”
“I doubt if a cent more could be had for so large an amount as you have to sell. Its offer would, alone, depress the market.”
“Sixty-five! sixty-five!” said Mr. Townsend, to himself, in a distressed, irresolute voice. “No, no, I cannot think of selling for that. The stock must get better.”